FROM THE ABYSS

I'm not sure which abyss I'm talking about but I just like to make things sound dramatic. The abyss of neglect maybe.

So I have been doing a lot of things that mostly don't include the computer; I still have an empty hard drive.

I took Alex Fitzgerald to Iceland for 10 days over spring break, this picture pretty much sums up the trip:



I´ve been playing with Feather & Folly a lot and we have a considerable amount of upcoming shows. The amount became more considerable when Holly almost cut off her left thumb on Monday, so expect more singing and less guitar playing for the first couple of dates. A list of dates and locations can be seen here.

My big sis was visiting for a week which was nice and lovely. When I haven't been paying visits or receiving visits or playing music I've just been doing my schoolwork like a responsible person, getting drunk like an irresponsible person (only after I've done my schoolwork so not too irresponsible), making friends and trying to be good and happy.

And saying "you know I really should update my blog more frequently" frequently.

Reading books. Watching movies. I've been halfassedly using twitter as a place to write down the movies I watch and some other words that would be inappropriate elsewhere. I'm still not sure what I think about twitter. I think: blah.

Okay. What prompted me to write this post: I'm slowly but surely putting my homepage together. I now have an "about me" section (with an F.A.Q!) and a "links" section (and a blog, obvs.)

I wanted to ask you: Do you have a homepage that I am forgetting / you think I should link to? Or a blog that's missing from my blog-friend-links.

Also: If you have a link to me on your homepage/blog feel free to update it to go to http://juliahermanns.com/ rather than straight to this blog. Just a suggestion.

Alright! funner post next time. thanks bye.

this blog's keyword analysis says more about me than this blog does

-winter makes me feel like shit
-i don't know what to say anymore
-black metal
-obama singing whatever you like
-why is there nothing interesting happening in my life?
-why did fred sandback's work make me cry
-poem "lonely pilot"

Loved by the unhappy.

Feather & Folly have been doing some recording. I just pimped our myspace with some Dolomite mountains. There there are now 2 songs the myspace playlist featuring me: Cold Spring & Crazy Baby. Every time I communicate the latter name I find myself thinking about Britney Spears (a blessing and a curse), however the song is actually about On the Road by Kerouac (Holly wrote it). It is only one out of a selection we have about Kerouac. The improved myspace also includes a video recording of us performing "I got over Kerouac" (a Jonathan Byerley cover). Anyway. I'm the one with the messed up voice (Holly is the one with the pretty, angelic nice voice) and the tambourine / snare drum / whatever they allow me to beat on.

Here´s a couple of pictures from practice:






...and here is one from a practice with my other band, severed goat head of death in the skull river of frozen morbid doom blood

A sophisticated conversation about Fred Sandback (edited for readability)

alxfitzgerald
did they say how they do it?
that is the mySterI
although it'd probably be really easy to figure out how to do it

Júlía
mysterl?
oh
mysteri
haha

alxfitzgerald
hahahah

Júlía
I was like "is that some special kind of string"

alxfitzgerald
it's just acrylic yarn

Júlía
no I'm referring to mySterl

alxfitzgerald
oh hahahaha
YES
like Yves Klein had his own blue
Fred Sandback had mySterI

Júlía
yes
did you send me this? "why does Fred Sandback's work make me cry"

alxfitzgerald
I think I did a few months ago
he made me feel really satisfied

Júlía
sexually

alxfitzgerald
he was actually kind of sexy

Júlía
haha
no I really liked it a lot
there is definitely a kind of feeling it evoked
like "yes."
I am really mature in my emotions and vocabulary, I know.

p.s.

alxfitzgerald:
I need to stop listening to Taylor Swift

Júlía:
I need to stop listening to TI

alxfitzgerald:
no
no you don't

Júlía:
I LOVE TI

alxfitzgerald:
I LOVE TS

Júlía:
WE LOVE TITS

sequel

(bunny = me / alex = alex)

this theory has never been put to the test, but if a certain president-elect getting inaugurated in 12 days is interested in making a comparison I don't mind.

joke.

yes all I ever do while in Iceland is talk about nothing with alex fitzgerald over the internet. In case you found yourself wondering. mutual beer time will enter our lives in approx. 10 days.

In other news: I just added a link to Saga Sig. on the sidebar on your right. She is a pretty Icelandic girl who shoots pretty photos. Take a look.

George W. Bush

(from a current internet conversation between me and Alex Fitzgerald)

cyberhorserules: "Bush Was President Instead of You, Even When You Were Doing Your Girlfriend"
cyberhorserules: ...is the title of my upcoming book about the Bush presidency.

alxfitzgerald: hahaha
alxfitzgerald: YES

cyberhorserules: he will like it very much
cyberhorserules: the soon to be former president
cyberhorserules: he'll be like "that's right."

listen and learn

Episode 2 of Sex, Lies & Radiowaves is finally out. This episode is bigger and better and now includes strategically placed musical interludes. It's a fun time. Incedibly dorky but very fun to make. I talk about smegma and Andrew delivers a monologue about threesomes while I judge him.

Go listen at the WNSR New School Radio Website.

You can also listen to our first episode in the NewTalk section on the website.

---

Uh. This semester is coming to an end. It is scary and I have way too much work to do. I've just come down with a massively sore throat and nasty cold. great. I'll try to make it work. I'm trying to keep myself distracted in order to not go overboard with anxiety. Wish me luck. And then I get to go home to winter-wonderland and lounge and see my family. can. not. wait.

It's Andrew's birthday today, happy birthday Andrew. He had a big party over the weekend which was an excellent fun time. A young lady peed out the window into our courtyard and Alex Fitzgerald threw up in a pastry box. This clearly means that it was an epic party.

I am meeting nice people. People are nice to me. Things are looking up maybe. I hope.

Feather & Folly are playing 2 shows in december. check it out. I hope my throat gets better so I'll actually be able to sing.

---

I don't remember if I posted this before. I wish my sex-advice show was exactly like this.

PATIENTLY PATIENTLY

Over Thanksgiving I went up to Westchester with Alex Fitzgerald and Taylor Hand to spend the holiday with Alex's family. It was wonderfully relaxing and magical and I didn't take any picture because I'm not as cool as I used to be or something. We just ate food and watched TV forever AND JUMPED ON THE TRAMPOLINE I L<3VE THE TRAMPOLINE SO MUCH and we petted all the giant dogs a lot. and we baked many desserts. and I wish I could do these things every day of my life forever.

Technically I could always decide to move back in with my parents and maybe get some kind of minimum-effort-required job and then do nothing but eat and watch movies and pet my cat and bake in my spare time. I could just do those things and try to not think about anything and not worry about going out or buying stuff or meeting people. I could pretend that concepts like "art" and "new york city" and "cool people" didn't exist. My parents might be a little disappointed in me and it might make me a little bit crazier than I already am but I know they wouldn't stand in my way if I really wanted to do this.

just a thought.

anyway, now I'm home and completely overwhelmed with everything I need to do for the next 22 days and sad and overwhelmed and paralyzed and sad. Andrew is still in Omaha.

which makes me just sit and think my thought and not do anything. except eat banana cream pie and drink water with lime juice and play Mappy. I got to round 6 today.



Andrew and I found a roommate for next semester. I have plans for next semester. I am trying to think about how they are good plans but I'm mostly scared of them.

... a thought.

---

Here is the advice section:

If you want me to like you don't ever call me at 7 in the morning on a Sunday when you're drunk and have nothing of great importance to say.

---

Here is where I ask you for advice:

what should I do?

---

Here's a video, remarkable mainly for the fact that it was the first and only you-tube video my mom ever sent to me. I am so proud of my mom for being so technologically advanced and cool. (My dad is too just in different ways).

classic

School started today. I am tired and happy. happy to exist rather than to be back at this school. But I ate raw fruit and vegetables all day and took all of my vitamins and then I ate cheese pizza and drank orange soda. it was more orange than any soda I have ever seen. a young couple was having a screaming fight out on the sidewalk when I walked home from visiting alex. it was the kind of fight where if they were at all violent they would have beat the shit out of each other a long time ago. I like how hot it is. I was born on the wrong side of the arctic circle. I just breathe with my mouth when I pass a pile of trashbags. I swam in the sea the other day and rode the waves and before that I rode the tallest, fastest rollercoaster in the world. I went to a book-club meeting. I eat a lot of food with alex fitzgerald. sometimes we talk about the internet while eating and sometimes we talk about food over the internet. I want to go to the movies, I want to drink cider and watch youtube. I've heard Andrew watch Obama speeches on the internet all day. Obama is speaking upstairs to a soundtrack of old time hindi music downstairs.

This is alex making a stupid face:


This is siggi eggerts who has nothing to do with this post but is one of my favorite people anyway:


I like to look at the pictures of alex and pretend that he is saying "YO D00D I JUST BANGED SUM CHIX"

and then look at the picture of siggi and pretend that he is making that face in response.

I also like to look at this fucking amazing video from the 1954 Hindi Classic "Nagin", starring one of my favorite dancers ever, Vyjayanthimala. It it almost 10 minutes long but worth every second:

"all those picassos and stuff" -on art and animal cruelty

I was going to write a real thing about this but I am too lazy and it is too late so I am just going to paste the (splendid) instant messenger conversation I just with Alex Fitzgerald about the matter. I did edit it for easier reading.

Before you start I want to say: I have my own very firm opinions about what should and shouldn't be done with animals. I'm not going to get into it too much, but if you want to discuss it with me you are welcome. I just want to clarify that I do like dogs. I am just not delusional about them. I also think that hippie americans should leave people who have a tradition of whaling (=iceland (japan, etc.)) ALONE. just wanted to throw that in there. ok here's what i'm talking about:

alxfitzgerald

At the costa rican bienarte, this one artist tied a dog he had found on the street to a wall, and wrote "you are what you read"

in dog biscuits on the other side of the gallery

and then he took pictures of all the people standing there at the opening not doing anything about the dog

and then he let the dog go, but he led the people to believe that it had died

and everyone on the internet has gotten incredibly worked up about it

because people like to pretend they care about things on the internet


Júlía

oh blah


alxfitzgerald

but anyway, I joined the facebook group today, after a 5th invitation

and I stated my opinion in how it was a successful piece, and that too many of the people in this group had gone as far as threatening to kill the artist without doing the proper research to find out that the dog lived, and that while people are investing all their efforts into this one not dead dog, there are thousands of dying dogs no one is thinking about right now. And I also talked about the fact that the petition for this one dog has over 2 million signatures while the petitions against the mass slaughter of tens of thousands of strays in romania didn't even get 20,000

and now I am getting facebook hate mail


Júlía

people can be so hysterical


alxfitzgerald

and seriously, if I read "HE COULD HAVE PAINTED IT OR MADE A SCULPTURE"

one more time

I think I might cry

for all of humanity


Júlía

I want to join the group just so I can tell them they are dumb

and that they probably EAT MISTREATED ANIMALS EVERY DAY


alxfitzgerald

BUT THOSE ARE NOT DOGS JULIA

OTHER ANIMALS DON'T COUNT


Júlía

and what about the dude at the tate modern with the goldfish in the blender

and everyone else who starves themselves or others or pretends to do so as performance art

are they gonna make petitions about that too


alxfitzgerald

I want to start a group about that

WHAT ABOUT HERMAN NITSCH

I should post that in there


Júlía

i wanna write them all sorts of things

"your mom is “art”"

"your mom is an “artist”"

“dogs suck and they need to die”


alxfitzgerald

"i feel really bad if the owner had lost the dog and then this guy took it and did that to him. i mean, the dog has to come from somewhere......" -group member


Júlía

they are so stupid.

there are probably more stray dogs than people over there. like in so many other places. they just hang out in the street and suffer and starve.


alxfitzgerald

I KNOW

also, I love the ones who are like “I JUST WANT TO GO OVER TO THE GALLERY AND CUT THE ROPE AND SAVE IT”

this happened in 2007.

it lasted for a day.

" Abey Interante (Mylton High School) wrote: you know i think that the mona lisa and all those picassos and stuff are pretty good art and nothing died in the process of making those, why does a dog have to die for this! this is sad!!!!!!"


Júlía

i am going to start referring to good art only as "all those picassos and stuff"


alxfitzgerald

I want to go to MoMA

and just say "he's not bob ross" and "these definitely aren't as good as all those picassos and stuff"

winner time.

I got an e-mail the other day:

Dear Julia,

Congratulations! On behalf of the jury members of the Vera List University Art Collection Writing Award, I am pleased to announce that your submission "The Butcher" to the 2007/2008 writing competition was awarded the first place in the category of creative response, with a prize of $400.

This means I wrote a story and sent it into a competition and won. The competition is for all the schools within the new school university. This means that a lot of people take part. this means that a lot of them are americans and native english-speakers. this means that some of them are writing majors at eugene-lang.

I still won. The Icelandic girl who never took a creative writing class in her life won. The Icelandic girl who just recently started writing secret stories when she was angry at people and/or had interesting dreams and/or real or imaginary conversations.

AMERICANS = PWND

This makes me happy.

Now you can all say "hey I started reading what Júlía wrote before she won an award and became famous."

joke.

I have one problem that I want to talk about. I have a borderline unhealthy obsession with real people other than myself. I guess I am interested in myself too but I am more interested in people who I know or know of. I am not interested in imaginary people. I never ask these real people permission to draw them or write about them because that would be weird. They would think I was in love with them or something. That is not the case. I am never in love with people. So I just go ahead and draw them and write about them, telling myself I'll just never show anyone. Like when I wrote The Butcher. Of course I change names and details when I write because that's easier than changing people's faces when I draw. But I still thought "I will never tell anyone I wrote this. I will not win anything in this competition because I am foreign and this story will never be published and no one will read it."

Well I was wrong.

The story is about being foreign too, in part. It's about me and being foreign and angry and tired. It's funny. The jury used the word "Irreverence" about something in my story. I had to look the word up in the dictionary because I am foreign.

Okay. this might make me seem productive. I am not. I never make anything serious. except this story and another story that I illustrated for my lithography class. I am happy with these 2 things. Even if I get bad grades, which will probably happen, I will be happy that I accomplished two things that I like this semester. Here is a picture of the book I made:



I don't want to post the inside because I wrote and drew a real person in it and I didn't ask them permission and I'm scared they will not like it. But if you want to buy one of these they might be for sale. You should ask me.

I want to now apologize to everyone I might ever draw or write about without their permission. I'm sorry.

I should do my homework. Instead I always spend all of my time making very unserious things. Like this unserious thing I made today for Alex Fitzgerald. I like Alex Fitzgerald because he makes me smile and he likes the internet more than I do which is rare. Before I knew him I thought he was a lame internet person. Then I got to know him as an awesome real person. Now we talk to each other regularly both with our real faces and with our internets. So today's conversation resulted in this:



I am going to leave it up to you to read into this piece. Here is a clue: "Irreverence."

I am going to drink my tea now, it has probably gone cold. then I will draw tesla coils. good night.